Social Media Updates for Business

I get it. Social media is changing quickly. You are busy running your business and you don’t have the time to stay on top of all of the updates that are happening constantly (I’m looking at you, Facebook!). I am compiling all of the most relevant changes that you need to know about here in a single post - bookmark it and check back monthly!

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Facebook

Organic Post Reach Dropping

You’ll see a drop in your reach, but it’s because it’s being calculated *more accurately* now than before. Previously, reach meant that a post was loaded in a user’s newsfeed (even if they didn’t scroll far enough to see it!). The new calculation only counts reach if the post appears on a user’s screen (this is how they measure reach in paid advertising) - makes sense! If you download your insights, you’ll be able to see the measurements for the ‘old’ reach and compare it to the new measurement. Full details.

Scheduling Posts in Events

If Facebook events are a large part of your marketing strategy, you can now schedule posts inside events to better provide timely content to those who are interested.

Affiliate Marketing on Facebook

There has been a lot of confusion about what ‘Branded Content’ is on Facebook, but essentially if you are posting affiliate links you need to apply for and use Facebook’s branded content tool. This video breaks it down in plain language. Here are the official Facebook guidelines and where to apply for your page.

Persistent Stream Key for Livestreaming

If you use a 3rd party tool like OBS for livestreaming to FB, one of the challenges is having to update your stream key every time you want to stream. FB now allows the same key to be used in multiple livestreams, saving you a step!

Upload Custom Thumbnails for Your Video

If you are not satisfied with any of the auto-generated thumbnails or you want a specific graphic, you can now upload your own custom thumbnails to your videos. Full details.

Send Ads to the Messenger Homepage

If your users engage with you in messages, it might be a good idea to start sending ads to the messenger homepage. Full details.

Newsfeed Algorithm Changes Affecting Pages

To sum up: users have reported that they are seeing too many crappy posts from pages in their newsfeed, and not enough quality page content or posts from friends/family. If you post content that people are not engaging with, you will start to see decreased reach for you posts. For more info, check out the live video I posted when the news was announced.

Run Tests on Your Ads

Test and Learn is a new feature from Facebook that allows you to create more effective ads. Currently there are 2 things you can test:

Compare 2 campaigns to see which one is the most cost effective (lowest cost per conversion)

See if your ads overall are generating more conversions compared to other paid or organic channels

Enhanced Admin Activity Features for Groups

The admin activity list has been around for awhile, however now you can do a little bit more with it. These features will be most helpful for those with large busy groups or multiple admins/moderators. Undo admin activity (i.e. approving/declining members, pinning posts, etc.) and also add notes on this activity. For example, if you are declining a membership request you might want to note why.

Create a Video Playlist on Your Page

If you have a lot of videos, you can now create playlists to group videos that go together (if you use YouTube you’ll be familiar with this concept).

Add a Donate Button To Your Videos

If you have a non-profit page, you can add a donate button to your live or uploaded videos. Full details.

Image/Video Customization for Ad Placement

As Facebook continues to expand the places where your ads can be delivered, it became an issue to use the same photo or video for multiple placements since the images or videos were displaying in in different dimensions. The result was that people were having to create a separate ad for different placements. Now Facebook is allowing us to customize the images and videos we use for placements all within the same ad, saving time and hassle. Full details.

Import Instagram Contacts into Facebook Messenger

If you have mutual followers on Instagram, you can import those people into Messenger. This will allow you to include them in Messenger Ads or chatbots. Full Details.

Create Stories for Groups and Events

You can now create stories within Groups and Events, and all members can contribute. Full Details.

Create an Ad Campaign Shell

You can now set up the structure of an ad campaign as a draft (i.e. objective, ad set, ad) and come back to fill everything in later.

Exclude Publishers from Audience Network Placement

There may be certain publishers or content categories where you don’t want your ad to appear. For example, if you are selling B2B services, you may not want your ad to appear in a pop-up for a videogame targeted at children, or for a website with adult content. Full details.

Songs and Sounds Effects For Your Videos

Facebook has created a Sound Collection - music and effects that they have purchased the rights to, meaning that you can use them in your videos on Facebook and Instagram without worrying about copyright violations. Full details.

Snooze People and Pages

Users now have the ability to snooze people and pages in their newsfeed for 30 days. So now instead of unfollowing or unliking your page, they may simply snooze you if you are posting a lot about a topic that doesn’t interest them. Full details.

Algorithm Change Affecting Videos

Facebook has made a change to the algorithm giving a boost to videos that get repeat viewers, that match search terms people are looking for, or that belong to pages with videos that are already popular. That means that it’s incredibly important to create videos that hook people within the first few seconds and engage your viewers! Full details.

Customize the Placement of Ad Creative

There are now a lot of different ad options in the Facebook ad manager, and some of those option have different sizes depending on where they will be displayed - for example, an ad running to the Facebook newsfeed could have a square or horizontal image, but the same ad running to Instagram Stories needs to be vertical. Now instead of creating a separate ad set for those requirements you can now customize your images and videos for a single ad depending on their placement. Full details.

Engagement Baiting

A lot of people see posts that outright ask for shares, comments, and likes as spammy. Personally, I’m on the fence on this one, but I suppose there is no harm in asking people to write posts that are so engaging or useful that of course they are going to engage :) So for now, any posts where you ask for engagement are going to get demoted (the Facebook word for penalized) in the newsfeed. If you continue to do this, eventually ALL of your posts will get demoted whether you’re asking for engagement or not. Best to stop right away. Full details.

Creating a Second Facebook Profile to Admin Your Business Page

Facebook is really cracking down on people who are using their platform to harass and stalk other users. As you can imagine, many of those people create fake profiles, and so Facebook is going to get stricter about monitoring these. If you have created a second profile solely for the purposes of managing your Facebook page (a practice that I STRONGLY discourage), the chances are higher than ever that your profile may be flagged as fake and removed, which means you will permanently lose access to your Facebook page. Full details.

Instagram

Real Post Scheduling for Business Accounts

Now allowing direct publishing to business accounts for photos (not videos) through 3rd party tools. Full details. Note: currently this feature works in Hootsuite and Tailwind

Text-only Stories

If you prefer to tell stories in text format, now you can! Full details.

No More Awkward Cropping in Your Stories

Block posts When Following Hashtags

It is *super* important to only use relevant hashtags these days because right after Instagram rolled out the ‘follow hashtags’ feature (marketers rejoice), they also added a feature that allows users to block specific posts from showing in their feed (it’s like negative feedback). If you are consistently using irrelevant hashtags your post performance is going to decrease and people start to block your posts. Full details.

Share Instagram Stories to Facebook Stories

If you have linked your Facebook to Instagram, you can share your Instagram stories to your Facebook account. You can do this on a per story basis, or choose to have all of your stories share by default. Full details. Update: now that stories can be added directly by pages on Facebook, it appears this feature has been removed from Instagram

GIF Stickers for Stories

Instagram has partnered up with GIPHY so that you can add animated stickers to your stories. Full details.

Stories Highlights

Instead of having your stories disappear forever after 24 hours, you can now selectively choose stories to add to your profile that will stay there as long as you want. This is a great way to showcase the most important content or promotions since (unlike Facebook) it is common for people to visit your profile even after following you. Full details. Full details.

View Saved Posts on Desktop

When you view your profile on desktop, there will now be an option to see saved posts - if you have created collections for your saved posts, you won’t be able to see those categories. Full details.

Send a Live Video via a Direct Message

While you’re live, you can share your video to a person or group via DM so they can get in on the action. People watching your video can also share it, but this is a feature you can disable if you want. Full details.

Follow Hashtags

You can now follow your favourite hashtags on Instagram, and posts with those hashtags will show up in your feed. If you have a specific hashtag you use for your business, now is the time to encourage your audience to follow it so they have a better chance of seeing your posts! Full details.

Add Older Content to Stories

You can now access your entire camera roll when adding content to your stories - a big win for businesses who are trying to plan their posts out in advance! Full details.

New Formats for Stories

Super Zoom and Stop Motion Graphics have rolled out to all users, adding some fun new ways to create content that will engage your audience. Full details.

View Stories on Your Desktop

Now you can watch Instagram stories on your desktop (though you can’t reply or engage with them...yet). Full details.

Archive & Highlight Your Stories on Your Profile

When you create stories, they are now saved in your archive (previously you could only see them in your analytics). And, if you have a collection of stories with a similar theme, you can now bundle them into a featured story that appears on your profile. These highlights do not disappear after 24 hours! Full details.

LinkedIn

Group Moderation Changes

Anything now sitting in the moderation queue that is older than 30 days will be automatically deleted. Full details.

Group Updates

LinkedIn is revamping the group experience and you’ll probably start to find it similar to Facebook Groups: group posts will start appearing in your newsfeed, you can tag members and reply to their comments as well as post videos inside your groups. As of today (Jan 24, 2018) you should start to see some of these changes take effect.

Looking for a Business Mentor?

LinkedIn has introduced a new feature called Career Advisor which helps connect members who are looking for mentorship opportunities. Full details.

Twitter

Automatic Promotion

Twitter is rolling out Promote Mode, which will automatically take your first 10 tweets each day and promote them. This is a monthly subscription service. Full details.

Easily Create a Tweet Thread

If 280 characters is still not enough for you, and you often find yourself doing the [1/12, 2/12] tweets, Twitter is now making it easier for you to create a single connected stream (thread) of Tweets. Full details.

Pinterest

Create Separate Sections for Pins Inside a Board

This is one of my most wanted updates, creating sections or boards within boards. Now you can feel even more organized and clean up your boards - maybe you have 1 board that can have 10 sections instead of having 10 separate boards. Full details.

Repin/Save Counts Gone

You can no longer see how many times a pin has been saved by looking at it. You can see the repin stats on your own pins by viewing the pin and clicking into the stats.

YouTube

Making YouTube More Social

You can now create/send text updates to your community contacts, share links and videos, create polls, quick video clips (Reels), and Stories. Note: most of these features will only be available to users with over 10,000 subscribers. Full details.

New Requirements for Monetizing Your Channel

If you’ve ever uploaded a video to YouTube, you may have noticed that there is an option to monetize the video i.e. allow ads to play before/during your video which generates revenue for you when people click on them. Monetization is not available to everyone. YouTube has now increased the threshold to the following: 4,000 hours of watch time on your videos in the past 12 months and at least 1,000 subscribers. If you have monetized your videos and are under these limits, YouTube will pay you out for whatever you have earned and then turn off monetization. Full details.

Tools

Crello

Crello has introduced a Resize feature, which is available in it’s free plan! Full details.

You can now ‘favourite’ the elements, photos, and templates that you use most in order to find them more quickly. Full details.

Hootsuite

RecurPost

If you only started using RecurPost* and you are on a paid plan, you can now import old posts from your social media networks to save the time of manually adding them to your content library. Full details.

Tailwind

Instagram direct scheduling is available inside Tailwind. Full details.

Keep on top of all of the changes to your #socialmedia platforms with this handy, always up-to-date guide!

I am a social media trainer and certified coach who specializes in helping women entrepreneurs uncover their social media confidence by equipping them with the skills, tools, and resources to be effective and productive on social media! I offer both group & 1:1 training and coaching, and am developing online courses for entrepreneurs to learn at their own pace. If you’d like to learn more about my style and get a ton of free resources, tips, and coaching you can become a student of Social Media School for Heartful Entrepreneurs at zero cost!